On Dec. 15, a savage windstorm battered Vancouver, one of many to hit the Pacific coast city this fall and winter.

However, this storm didn't just damage any part of Vancouver -- it struck Stanley Park, a historic park considered among the world's most beautiful.

"It's an icon, it's so much a part of the identity of Vancouver," Patrick Mooney, a University of British Columbia landscape architecture professor, told CTV.ca about the park.

"It's not really true, but in our minds, it's a big piece of wilderness downtown ... It has everything to do with making this place unique in the world."

The storm battered the nine-kilometre-long seawall. Slopes above the seawall collapsed, particularly around Prospect Point -- the most northerly part of Stanley Park. Towering 200-year-old trees were among casualties.

Fortunately, the 500 and 600-year-old trees survived.

"People were devastated. They saw the damage and they were crying," Ian Robertson, chairman of the Vancouver Park Board, told CTV.ca.

The park itself is about 400 hectares in size, or 1,000 acres. About 60 per cent of that is covered in forest.

About one-sixth of the forested area got knocked down by the howling winds, he said.

"In some parts, it's like there was a big clear-cut and someone forgot to take out the trees," Robyn Worchester of the Stanley Park Ecological Society told CTV.ca.

Now, thoughts must turn to rebuilding and restoration.

The board met on Jan. 15 to hold its first meeting to consider how to best deal with the hand dealt by the weather gods.

"What you have tonight is not a recovery plan, but how we are going about creating a recovery plan," Jim Lowden, Stanley district manager, told the meeting.

Not the first time

Other cities have gone through similar disasters. Montreal's famous Mount Royal sustained heavy damage during the 1998 ice storm. And Halifax's Point Pleasant park lost 60,000 trees to 2003's Hurricane Juan.

"(Halifax's) best advice was that we don't rush into anything, that we do take our time and make sure that we do this whole management scheme properly," park board member Korina Houghton told CTV British Columbia.

Andy Kenney, an urban forestry expert at the University of Toronto, has some thoughts about the Vancouver situation.

For one thing, what happened in Stanley Park and the others is a normal process in the life of forests, even urban ones, he said.

"That's the thing about these parks. We expect them to have a certain appearance or provide certain benefits to us in perpetuity," Andy Kenney told CTV.ca.

"So that whole natural process of disturbance doesn't sit so well, even though it's an ecological reality."

Before Juan hit Point Pleasant, an insect infestation had been threatening the trees there, he noted.

The general thinking now for urban forests is to replicate natural processes and have a diversity of species and age classes to increase resistance to insects and disease, he said.

In a natural forest, particularly a wilderness one, the timber would simply rot where it fell -- be it from insects, disease, fire or windfall.

What to do with the windfall timber in Stanley Park is a matter of debate. Some groups have argued that in less-travelled areas of the park, the wood should be left to rot.

Robertson said unfortunately, forest fires pose a big risk to the park. Leaving more dead wood on the ground means more fuel for any possible fire.

Worchester said her group thinks while it's obvious the trails must be cleared and safety hazards removed, it's the broken branches that create a fire hazard. They hope some of the larger logs can be left behind.

Are the logs a windfall?

Some see an economic opportunity in selling off the some of the higher-value trees felled by the wind, possibly to lumber companies, with the money going to park restoration. The peninsula had been logged in the 19th century prior to Stanley Park's creation in 1886.

Others say forget that. If that wood is turned into anything, it should be native sculptures for the park or something similar.

Robertson said not to worry: "Any wood that comes out of Stanley Park will be used for something special."

Another consideration is this: Should all the forested land affected by the wind be replanted?

Mooney said that 1964's hurricane Frieda did similar damage to the park. One treed area got cleared by that storm event. Instead of being reforested, the area became the home of the children's farmyard petting zoo and the miniature train.

"I would really hope that no new or major human-use elements would go into the park," Mooney said.

He noted that Vancouver billionaire Jim Pattison has contributed $1 million to the park's restoration. "He was talking about the reasons why, and his memories aren't about going to the aquarium or riding the miniature railway. They're about picnicking on the grassy slope above the beach."

The park's natural beauty and its accessibility are what make Stanley Park unique, he said. "No artifact we can put into the park is going to become as valued by people as that overall quality of the park."

There's a need for recreational experiences of different kinds, "but there's lots of places for it other than Stanley Park," Mooney said.

Robertson said it will be months before a plan is created, but the board is treating the disaster as its top priority. The logs, what and how to reforest -- all those issues will be debated, he said.

But there's one sad reality. While Stanley Park will undoubtedly remain a great park, "it won't be the same again in our lifetimes," Mooney said.